And what about Book Puzzles.......they should not be counted in the year total but the overall total.......the year total should be only the day to day puzzles.......if you want to not submit your extras sometime(s) during the current year until later to do a short term inflation of your total, then that should be OK.........

Last edited by beaker on Fri Dec 28, 2018 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And what about Book Puzzles.......they should not be counted in the year total but the overall total.......the year total should be only the day to day puzzles.......if you want to not submit your extras sometime(s) during the current year until later to do a short term inflation of your total, then that should be OK.........a bit silly in my opinion unless you were on holidays or were incapacitated (ie sick, hurt,etc).

I'm not sure I see the logic of excluding book puzzles from the year to date totals. They are included in the 7 day, 30 day and overall totals and the category is ALL puzzles. As someone who has no prospect of earning any points from book puzzles until a new book is published, I think the all category should include all puzzles.

I'm not sure I see the logic of excluding book puzzles from the year to date totals. They are included in the 7 day, 30 day and overall totals and the category is ALL puzzles. As someone who has no prospect of earning any points from book puzzles until a new book is published, I think the all category should include all puzzles.

So the person who has been on this site for a while and has competed all the book puzzles will have no book puzzle points available; where as the newer users will have access to those books and be able to do them AND receive the points......this would be unfair to the long time users and really benefit the recently joined users......not exactly a "level playing field"!!!

I think that is the same as it is already, there have been times when I have been highly ranked in the points, and part of that has been receiving points for submitting book puzzles, I did not feel that I was getting any advantage over other users. I have many solved book puzzles that have not yet been submitted, I somehow got out of the habit of submitting them each day. I think the last time I got points for a book puzzle was when somebody mentioned that only 3 people had solved one of the puzzles in the latest book, so I submitted my solution to claim 4th place for that difficult puzzle.

Having said that I currently have only 68 points in the last 7 days (14th on the Australia/New Zealand list ), so I am not going to be putting much pressure on the top of the points table.

So the person who has been on this site for a while and has competed all the book puzzles will have no book puzzle points available; where as the newer users will have access to those books and be able to do them AND receive the points......this would be unfair to the long time users and really benefit the recently joined users......not exactly a "level playing field"!!!

I agree that it's not a level playing field, beaker. But, as I said previously, it's not a competition with prizes at stake - it's just a way of getting some feedback on how well we're doing compared to other members. The only playing field that is totally level is the timed puzzles rankings. And that tends to be dominated every week by a handful of really fast puzzlers (and one puzzler in particular!).

The regular puzzle rankings are also fairly close to a level playing field, but can be distorted by the inclusion of bonus puzzles. A subscriber solving all the 'standard' puzzles will earn 385 points in a week. The extra puzzles are worth 56 or 63 points each week, depending on whether or not Saturday's puzzle is 15x15. Someone averaging 5 points a day on the timed puzzles will therefore average almost exactly 480 points a week, excluding the bonus puzzles.

As the bonus puzzles are available every 250 points for subscribers (and are worth 10 points that are included in the total points tally), this means that a 'typical' subscriber who solves all the puzzles will earn somewhere in the region of 500 points a week on average, including two bonus puzzles. This is borne out by the regular puzzle 7 day rankings, which often show several people tied for first on 405 points.

Someone scoring a lot more than 35 points on the timed puzzles or earning points from book puzzles will have the occasional week when they earn 3 bonus puzzles, bringing their regular points total to 415. The totals can also be distorted from time to time by delays in submitting the 12x12 puzzles or Tuesday's 9x9 or Friday's Killer Sudoku. But that's similar to someone getting themselves temporarily on top of the overall rankings by saving up the extra puzzles.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth. I enjoyed seeing my name at or near the top of the overall rankings when I was working my way through the book puzzles and will probably snap up the next book as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, my target will be to complete a 'full house' each week (which I usually, but don't always, manage) and score as many timed puzzle points as I can.

edit 2: this is someone who solves 10+ puzzles every day within 1 minute, i.e. an automatic solving script.Not sure what the fun is there (other than the programming challenge). He's a long time puzzler (signed up in 2012)..

I've removed him from the rankings.

Last edited by pnm on Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:41 am, edited 2 times in total.

Usually, in every particular ranking, when two or more puzzlers have the same punctuation, the total points sequence is considered to assign the relative places but it looks like this has not been considered in this ranking (I am looking in this moment, for instance, to the seven players with 66 points, agnostico appears before angelwhite, and there are other swappings, ... ).

Usually, in every particular ranking, when two or more puzzlers have the same punctuation, the total points sequence is considered to assign the relative places but it looks like this has not been considered in this ranking (I am looking in this moment, for instance, to the seven players with 66 points, agnostico appears before angelwhite, and there are other swappings, ... ).

I think this has come up before, the "secondary sort" (used for ties) is by the age of the account.